Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Cottage Cheese and Egg Salad

Egg Salad (called 'munavõi' or 'egg butter' in Estonian) is a popular sandwich spread in Estonia. The traditional version contains just softened butter and boiled eggs, seasoned with salt. However, I've come to prefer this slightly lighter version over the last few years. In addition to the butter and eggs, this version contains cottage cheese or farmer's cheese. As far as the herbs go, I love chives here, but dill, parsley, savory would work as well.

It can be kept in a fridge for a few days, covered, but it tastes best when freshly made. If you do make it in advance, then bring to the room temperature 15-20 minutes before serving. Serve with boiled potatoes, on home-baked rye bread, or as a sandwich filling.

Hard-boil the eggs using your favourite method, cool to room temperature, then peel. Separate the cooked egg yolks and whites.
Place the butter and egg yolks into a bowl and use the back of a wooden spoon to cream the mixture (that gives the gorgeous yellow colour!).
Finely chop the cooked egg whites, stir into the rest of the ingredients alongside the chives. Season with salt.

Interesting about the butter. In the US, this is made with mayonnaise instead of butter. We add a little celery for crunch sometimes. But I notice with other recipies similar to this you've used butter as the base. Which tells me it's an Estonian or Finnish thing.

Looks delicious! My husband is Finnish, and I've started a blog of the Finnish foods we make here in the U.S. for our kids, expanding their horizons and leaving a record of the experience that they can look back on. We eat egg butter on karjalanpiirakka, http://cookingfinland.blogspot.com/2011/01/karelian-rice-pies-with-egg-butter.html. Little rice pies in a rye shell.

This recipe is a little different than your typical eggs salad made with mayo. This one uses butter and farm cheese. I am sure if you are like me you don’t know where to get farmer’s cheese, but I do know that cottage cheese can be substituted for farm cheese. So I used good old cottage cheese.

It is a fun twist. You get a richness in the salad from the butter. It was really yummy. This is best if you can eat it right after you make it, because leftover would have to go in the fridge and the butter hardens back up. I did give it a try and it was still good, but is best eaten right when to make it.